Description
Book SynopsisThe Bidun (without nationality) are a stateless community based across the Arab Gulf. There are an estimated 100,000 or so Bidun in Kuwait, a heterogeneous group made up of tribes people who failed to register for citizenship between 1959 and 1963, former residents of Iraq, Saudi and other Arab countries who joined the Kuwait security services in 60s and 70s and the children of Kuwaiti women and Bidun men. They are considered illegal residents by the Kuwaiti government and as such denied access to many services of the oil-rich state, often living in slums on the outskirts of Kuwait's cities. There are few existing works on the Bidun community and what little research there is is grounded in an Area Studies/Social Sciences approach. This book is the first to explore the Bidun from a literary/cultural perspective, offering both the first study of the literature of the Bidun in Kuwait, and in the process a corrective to some of the pitfalls of a descriptive, approach to research on the
Table of ContentsNote on Transliteration Introduction Chapter 1: The ‘
Bidun’. Chapter 2: A Literary Community’s Struggle for Presence Chapter 3: The Cameleers of the National Spirit:
Bidun poets and Kuwaiti Literary History Chapter 4: The Desert Apocalypse: the last Bedouin, the first
Bidun Chapter 5: Representations of the '
Ashish in the
Bidun Novel Chapter 6: ‘Crossing Borders’:
Bidun Writers in the Diaspora Bibliography Index
